Countdown to 2014 World Cup in Brazil: Day 45

Demonstrators in São Paulo earlier this month with a banner that reads: "There won't be a cup." The protest was against the cost of the World Cup.CreditCreditAndre Penner/Associated Press

By Jack Bell

April 28, 2014

It’s all about timing for Luiz Felipe Scolari, the coach of Brazil’s national soccer team, as the days tick off the calendar toward the start of the World Cup.

Scolari, who last week attended a conference about soccer and psychology in São Paulo, told Brazilian television Sunday that protests calling for social change and criticism of the amount of money spent on the tournament “could big-time” be a negative influence on his team.

“I think the protests can happen,” Scolari told Globo TV Sunday. “If they are peaceful, then that’s democracy. Everyone has the right to protest. But I don’t know if it’s the right time.”

Last year Brazil experienced a surge in violent street protests as a segment of the population marched to demand more and better public services while at the same time calling attention to the billions of public dollars being expended on the World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The protests gave the country a black eye, which only seemed to fester as the completion of stadiums and other infrastructure lagged. Then the deaths of several construction workers at stadiums under construction called more attention to what seemed like a World Cup about to go wrong.

Scolari, who also said he has settled on 21 of the players on his 23-man roster for the tournament (naming nine of the 21: David Luiz, Oscar, Ramires, Willian, Paulinho, Júlio César, Thiago Silva, Fred and Neymar), mentioned that his players have discussed the protests, both last year and more recently, and that he would not dissuade them from speaking their minds during the World Cup, should they be asked.

“They are national team players and they are on a mission,” he said. “They can express themselves and say, ‘Look, I also want a better Brazil,’ but I don’t want it to be something that causes problems to our environment.”

He was also critical of the pace of organization and construction.

“We could have done a better job to take advantage of these seven years that we had to prepare everything that was going to be needed, from airports to roads to education,” he said. “But we lost time and now we are out of time.”

Scolari said he would name his roster on May 7 ahead of warm-up games against Panama and Serbia.